Are school fundraising companies worth it?
PTA/O Presidents often find themselves making difficult decisions. One of those is whether to hire a company to help with the school fundraiser or to recruit a multitude of volunteers and go it alone.
In this blog, you’ll learn more about:
Skipping the school fundraising company can feel like a quick decision that saves a lot of money, but that’s often not the case. Hosting your own fundraiser comes with a lot of hidden expenses and burdens that can make working with a school fundraising company the better choice.
Benefits of school fundraising companies
- Logistics. A great deal of thought and planning needs to go into the place you will host your fundraiser to ensure it has the features your specific event needs.
Offsite locations can require permits and special approval from administration, as well as signed permission forms from parents. Venues can also be expensive, putting a strain on your fundraising budget. Hosting your fundraiser onsite at the school can avoid this hassle; however, sometimes space can be an issue.
School fundraising companies are experts at using the space you already have to transform your school into an awesome fundraising venue.
At Booster, we set up all the physical materials you need for your fundraiser event day. We also keep the venue clean and safe for everyone, and tear everything down when the fundraiser is over.
Partnering with a school fundraising company can save you thousands when it comes to the logistics of your event including the cost of a venue, cleaning supplies, equipment, decorations, and all the extras necessary to take your fundraiser to the next level for great success.
- Volunteers. Recruiting volunteers is harder than ever. It can be time consuming, not to mention disheartening, to make one phone call after another and send multiple emails and texts hoping to recruit more volunteers, only to be told “no” time and time again or, worse yet, be completely ignored.
With a school fundraising company, there’s no need to search for more volunteers. Instead, you can use the volunteers you already have, supplement that work with the level of support you need from the school fundraising company, and come out ahead with a greater end profit for your school and less work for you.
- Advertising. No matter how amazing your school fundraiser is, without proper advertising, it just won’t be a success. School fundraising companies have the experience and advertising know-how to help you hit all the right marketing buttons so you can meet your fundraising goals. This includes:
- Email templates you can easily customize and send to parents with communication about the upcoming fundraiser, saving you hours of writing.
- Tips to find potential business sponsors as well as letter templates to send, removing any uncertainty you might feel.
- Templated social media posts you can copy and paste for an awesome social media campaign that reaches the masses. Booster even offers students a one-of-a kind, fun video customized with the student’s picture. Families enjoy sharing this unique video, which naturally spreads the message about your fundraiser for you.
There’s no need to be an advertising genius to successfully market your school fundraiser. School fundraising companies like Booster bring years of expertise to help your school be successful.
Booster alone has worked with thousands of schools over the past 19+ years to help raise more than $400 million, including over $51 million during the height of the pandemic. Each school we work with gets their own personal fundraising consultant to ensure the maximum benefit from our extensive experience and history of fundraising success!
- Technology. In order to maximize donations, it’s important to give donors a quick, simple way to contribute to your school fundraiser. There are a variety of technology platforms available on the market to help you with this.
If you’re not using a school fundraising company, you’ll need to make sure you do your due diligence to find a platform that works smoothly with your school fundraiser. This can be a time-consuming hassle, but it’s vital to the success of your fundraiser.
With Booster, there’s no need to worry about the technology. It's all taken care of for you with our Booster Tech platform. We set everything up for you and make sure it runs smoothly for your donors. Our in-house tech team builds and maintains our entire Booster Tech platform, and our dedicated tech support team is happy to answer questions when they arise.
- Bonus Funds. Choosing to work with a school fundraising company can open up even more opportunities to make money for your school.
For example, through Booster Tech's exclusive partnership with Double the Donation, donors can search for their employer to see if their company participates in donation matching. If they do, with the click of a button, each donor can bring in even more funds at 100% pure profit to the school. This seamless integration adds a $3,000 value, and is exclusive to schools who choose Booster as their school fundraising company.
- Prizes. This is a fundraiser budget item PTA/O Presidents often overlooked when making their decision whether to hire a school fundraising company or not.
The truth is, these items can add a hefty amount to your school fundraising budget, not to mention all the time spent searching for the right company and just the right prizes, orchestrating the order, tallying the winners, and distributing the prizes.
With a school fundraising company like Booster, the cost of prizes is completely eliminated. We’ve done all the research, and we supply your students with incentives and prizes that are just right to spark excitement and engagement -- for free!
Save yourself hours counting money and painfully tallying totals. Our Booster Tech platform lets you calculate prize winners in the click of a button so you can enjoy all the fun of handing out prizes to excited kids without the hassle and behind-the-scenes headache.
- Event Shirts. Shirts can be a fun addition to your fundraiser and provide yet another way to make money for your school. As an added bonus, event shirts can boost school pride and build community.
When you are doing a school fundraiser on your own, event shirts can feel like a giant task you may be tempted to skip, but this is a missed opportunity for your school. With a school fundraising company, event shirts can be painless.
Your personal Spirit Wear Consultant can walk you through the entire process. With tons of design templates to choose from, our dedicated graphic designers have done the hard work for you at no additional cost. Event shirts are printed in our very own Spirit Wear Hub and shipped to your school for free.
If you’re looking to have your shirts completely paid for, we offer customizable sponsorship forms and parent letters that can help you cultivate relationships with businesses who may be interested in sponsoring your event shirt.
When you look at the big picture, hiring a school fundraising company is the best choice for your school, your students, your volunteers, parents, donors, and for YOU! It just makes sense and ensures your fundraiser is a success, no matter what the school year has in store for you. Get started today!